Knowing brains helped me

Hi! I'm Kieran, the creator of Flourishing.

With help from my daughter Teagan. And my dog, Burt.

I've had a challenging life.

Sexual abuse as a child, gaslighting and betrayal as an adult. At one point, I believed my family would be better off if I killed myself.

I came close. Spent a little time in a psych ward, and a longer time recovering with the help of friends and therapists.

Now I'm at peace with myself.

I like the person I've become. I have a better idea of what I can expect of myself and others. I'm less likely to jump to emotional conclusions. I judge myself and others more gently.

What helped most is learning about brains.

Memory, attention, automatic inference, emotions, social influence, and other things.

The information that helped me is scattered.

It's in books, research papers, blog posts, and other places. Some of it is hard to understand. Some is hard to relate to daily life.

The game Flourshing makes it easier to understand.

The game chops up the research into tasty bits. Players wander through a cozy land learning about human flourishing from cryptids. How knowing brain stuff can help with friendships, work, romance, and other things.

Learning about brains was life-changing for me.

I wrote Flourishing to help others learn the same stuff that helped me.

Boring bio details

I'm an associate professor of management information systems at Oakland University in Michigan, USA. I've taught programming and similar geek stuff for many years.

Wanting to be a better teacher led me to learning about learning. That, plus my personal experiences with Bad Brain Things (BBTs), convinced me that knowing about brains is useful.

I'm married, have two grown kids, and loooooove dogs. I like reading, learning new stuff, and exercise begrudgingly. It's so unfortunate that exercise has such positive effects for human. Sigh.